Humboldt's 'Thinking Language': Poetics and Politics

Abstract

The thesis I develop in this article, based on the Humboldtian tradition of Sprachdenken [thinking language], is that language is a paradigm for our ideas on the way communal life functions. If that is the case, our theory of language is of utmost political importance. Poetics becomes political. Wilhelm von Humboldt’s reflections on the dual offer a vision of politics which is based on dialogical thinking and hence on a form of community which allows for individual freedom. This is demonstrated and elaborated throughout his work, embedding the political dimension of Sprachdenken in his anthropology of language, which even offers the beginnings of a poetological anthropology.